Wallpaper wont boot on its own. crashes supposedly

[SoulReaver]

i've tried in the wallpaper settings start with windows on high priority and without it. no fix
even tried a fresh install windows right out the box ran wallpaper engine then ran the check for conflicts. I did save the full log but even then it shows nothing is conflicting with it. however no matter what I do it will not boot on startup.

heads up there is no error report dump in the wallpaper engine folder. If it wasnt for event viewer just showing that there was an error I would've just assumed wallpaper engine didnt start when windows booted up.

this is the error from event viewer

Faulting application name: wallpaper32.exe, version: 2.2.0.6, time stamp: 0x633e08ec
Faulting module name: wallpaper32.exe, version: 2.2.0.6, time stamp: 0x633e08ec
Exception code: 0xc0000409
Fault offset: 0x0017b5db
Faulting process id: 0xd54
Faulting application start time: 0x01d8dbc52bb03e04
Faulting application path: D:\soul\Documents\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\wallpaper32.exe
Faulting module path: D:\soul\Documents\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\wallpaper32.exe
Report Id: 29fd7357-2020-4176-8a81-d7cc452a69f3
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

[Biohazard]

Please check if there are any ".mdmp" files in this directory for wallpaper32.exe : D:\soul\Documents\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine

Then please send us a few of the most recent ones together with this full log: https://help.wallpaperengine.io/debug/scantool.html

[SoulReaver]

I took my log that I got and sent it following those instructions. The only thing I dont have is any .mdmp files. the program isnt leaving any in the steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine folder. Honestly if it wasnt for event viewer showing that the program had an error I would've just thought the program didnt start when I turned on my computer. it just started this maybe in the past week or two tried uninstalling re installing . fresh install windows with basic video drivers and steam with wallpaperengine and ya no avail. the scantool shows no errors either but hopefully the log may hint to what ever my issue is.

[SoulReaver]

Also thank you for helping me.

[Biohazard]

Thanks for sending the log. It's unfortunate that no crash dumps are available.

Regarding your installation directory at "D:\soul\Documents\" - is this a normal path you created in Windows Explorer or something "special" (like a hard/soft link to your user directory)? I'm asking because if this is linking into your user directory, then this would likely be the reason - the user directory is not available immediately when Windows starts/you logged in, it takes a while until it becomes usable.

And adjacent to this, is the D:\ partition immediately available when logging in? I.e. external drives or even network drives would not be available quickly enough during Windows' startup either.

But in any case, if this is just a normal path on an SSD/hard-drive then there should be no issue starting from there.

[SoulReaver]

yes sir that is a interesting question. I have 3 drives actually, C; is on a ssd m.2 and my D and E drives are 2tb and 1 tb drives. the 2tb D: has my games and everything else on it etc steam and my E: is typically my recording drive/streaming. I can give moving wallpaper engine over onto my c: a shot and see but Im fairly confident that isnt my issue. My wifes machine is almost exactly the same as mine in setup just a differences of cpu and gpu with no issues. may just hop on over to the services section and set windows to restart the program once it crashes and see how that fairs.

crucial bit of info maybe is im running win11 and shes still running win 10.

[SoulReaver]

Found a workaround/fix.
2 things i've discovered and still goes back to possibly what you mentioned early about delays in drives.

1. for whatever reason if i went straight into the wallpaperengine folder in steam apps and tried running wallpaperengine32.exe it wouldnt run i thought it was odd however if right click then left clicked on run as administrator program boots up fine. so I gave it admin rights under the compatibility tab in properties. this did not solve my issue in regards of it not wanting to start when windows booted.

2. I tried setting it as a automatic delayed start under services that didnt work. I then pulled up the properties on the services page for it and went to the recovery tab and tried setting it to restart the service on first failure that did not work either. interesting enough the service under the services tab shows that it was running but in event view it shown the error again as normal. so I abandoned that approach and tried just leaving it as a regular start up item that you would see under the startup items in task manager. that didnt work either which got me to wondering if this is going back to needing a delay possibly. something with my machine possibly I did install my mobo update to enable the re sizable bar for my gpu which could affect it or possibly booting up to fast.

So heres my workaround and I apologize its barbaric and archaic in every imaginable way. I ran wallpaper engine from steam like normal went into the settings and disabled start up with windows. I then made sure in the wallpaperengine folder that wallpaper32.exe had run as admin rights under compatibility tab "for whatever reason program wouldnt run without it". next I navigated my way to my startup folder and created a bat file there. I simply added

@echo
timeout 10
start D:\soul\Documents\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\wallpaper32.exe

then saved it as wallpaper.bat

I had set the echo so i could see when the bat file begins to run as my machine boots up from a shutdown then added the 10 second timeout to run to see how long of a delay is needed between the program actually runs or dies for whatever reason possibly. Ill end up adjusting the timeout to fewer seconds to see if the program continues to run. if i can get it down to a measely second then ill end up being stumped and all matter of hypothesis on the issue will ultimately get tossed out the window. however either way ill end up tweaking this .bat file and eventually add echo off.

I do appreciate the support and apologize for my weird circumstances. I will say I do not believe this is the programs fault at all but more or less within the past two weeks something I had to have done. hopefully this info may help someone else that runs into this same weird issue. overall makes me curious if there is something more underlying with my machine that im unaware of but i've had no other issues either gaming or running tests.

[Biohazard]

Thanks for looking into this issue in such detail. First some information that I can give you to help explain some of these circumstances:

1. The integrated autostart methods (registry and service) will both not work when the application is marked to run as administrator, Windows generally prevents this for security purposes as far as we know. So this would explain why it still wouldn't work this way.

2. The service itself is a separate application and isn't failing or crashing, so this is why setting up a restart after failure won't make a difference and why it still shows up as "running" even though you got a new event about the issue.


Have you tried using your .bat solution without requiring administrator rights? Or in other words, is the delay enough to make it work or is both definitely required?

If administrator rights are part of the issue, you might be able to solve this by using the "repair library folder" function in Steam, which supposedly can help with permission related issues: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2274-IFLV-5334

But anyway, you don't have to look into this if you are content with your solution, in general it should be fine, although you might prefer not having to enable administrator rights. (Just make sure to disable the built-in autostart, or you may end up opening the wallpaper browser accidentally by having both active.)

[SoulReaver]

So I tried without admin rights on the program and the program wouldnt start even with the .bat in the start up folder still. also I dont think its a delay issue because in the .bat file I've taken out the timeout portion entirely so its just a @echo off then start. One interesting thing I have noticed and this may be the whole cause of my issue or it may all stem from that is my steam has been running as admin. when i clicked on properties for steam it was set to run as administrator. I dont remember making it run as admin but it is. I may need to untick run as admin for steam then repair my library and reinstall wallpaper engine to see if that fixes it the right way id say without any work arounds. I do apologize it is late and im about to fall asleep, tomorrow after work ill get to giving the above a shot and see if i can set this whole admin thing straight.

still curious as to why my steam was set to admin, I do remember a while back reading that having steam as admin can booger up putting it nicely allot of stuff. may be what im experiencing is just a conflict of privileges.

[SoulReaver]

ok good news it works like normal again .....however ill get on with the potential bad news or things to look out for.

1. I first right clicked on steam then clicked on properties then went under compatibility and disabled the admin. after i did that I proceeded to run steam, then it threw up an error saying the steam service needed to be installed. I would click install and then it would hang, googled the fix for it and supposedly right clicking on steam then clicking run as admin would fix it. I did this and it came up, so i went into steam settings and under downloads clicked library and then proceeded with the repair library option. after that I clicked clear download cache as well which closed the program and showed a login screen for steam. I exited steam out and made sure on task manager it wasnt running then just normal left clicked on my steam icon and it came up. I then went into steam settings under downloads in library and clicked repair library folder again. After this I clicked on wallpaper engine and proceeded to uninstall it. I then navigated in my steamapps common folder to make sure wallpaper engine was gone. I then re installed wallpaper engine and got an error about missing file privileges. so I ran wallpaper engine and it re installer then got some errors on some wallpapers. What I did was just navigated into the workshop/content/ folder and deleted the 431960 which relates to all the wallpapers I had downloaded. I then went back to my downloads tab clicked retry and steam started re downloading all my wallpapers. back to wallpaper engine I set everything the way i like and then made sure it was set to launch when my pc turned on. pc restarted and wallpaper engine didnt run, on windows event viewer no error this time and the wallpaper engine service showed running.

2. this comes to the important part after all the above regarding uninstalling and re installing making sure the folder was deleted. Lets rewind back and back some I moved that wallpaper.bat file I had created out of my startup but and I repeat " I NEVER TURNED OFF THE RUN AS ADMIN UNDER COMPATIBILITY FOR WALLPAPER ENGINE" now after all the above I assume steam gave the program back admin rights even after uninstalling. So I un checked the box run this program as administrator in the compatibility tab for wallpaperengine32.exe and then checked the launcher and wallpaperengine64.exe didnt have that box ticked as well. so after that I ran the program in steam made sure it was set to boot when windows started then restarted my computer and now it works.

my worry with this is how did the admin setting survive a complete uninstall of wallpaper engine then redownload/reinstall of wallpaper engine. only thing I can assume is steam had backed up my settings in the cloud for wallpaper engine then proceeded to give it admin rights like I had it when i uninstalled it. interesting but every thing works now. steam no longer has admin rights and is operating as it should again and wallpaper engine no longer has any admin rights and is working as it should.

thank you for helping me and guiding me along my madness. All of this because steam somehow got admin privileges and everything began to get boogered up on permissions. Hopefully this helps the next poor soul if they ever have my issue.